"Flixel was created as a result of seeing the incredible work of Kevin Burg & Jamie Beck (via their cinemagraphs.com site). After seeing this mesmerizing new artform, we set out to create a tool and a platform to bring it to a wider audience – the 'Polaroid' of cinemagraphs, if you will.

We owe Flixel's existence to the pioneering efforts of Kevin Burg & Jamie Beck, but we've also found a lot of other professional–level cinemagraph artists out there."

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"A little over a year ago, Kevin Burg and Jamie Beck mashed up fine–art photography with animated GIFs, and the 'cinemagraph' was born. Since then, a cottage app–industry has sprung up around this ingenious digital art form, offering everyday folks easy tools for creating artsy animated GIFs of their own. Now a new iPad–only app called Echograph is targeting professional and 'prosumer' imagemakers who want to get into the cinemagraph–making game.

If apps like Flixel are trying to be the Instagram of animated GIFs, Echograph is more like Photoshop Elements. It's pitched as a creative tool, not a social network or a digital–hipster fad. That's why it's designed for the iPad, which can display higher–resolution imagery and offer users enough screen space to subtly finesse the details of their animated compositions. 'We saw an opportunity to harness Echograph as a more professional medium that takes full advantage of DSLR and higher resolution videography,' Echograph CEO Nick Alt tells Co.Design."